Paul Seto, a missionary and pioneer in Muslim-Christian dialogue and a
long-time Witherspooner, has died at the age of 85.
[3-1-04]
Paul Seto, a pioneer in Muslim-Christian dialogue, was 85
by Alexa Smith, Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE --
February 27, 2004 -- The Rev. Paul S. Seto, a missionary
who served in the Middle East and remained at his post in Tehran even
through part of the Iranian revolution, died at his Santa Fe home on Feb.
21. He was 85.
Seto was born in Haney, British Columbia, a son of
Japanese immigrants, and was known in his youth as "Susumu" -- "Susie," for
short. He is said to have changed his name to Paul in honor of the writer of
the epistles, but no one is quite sure when.
He left the West Coast in the 1940s, shortly before the
U.S. and Canadian governments began rounding up people of Japanese ancestry
because of World War II, but his parents did not escape internment. The
family's land was confiscated, and Seto's parents worked as day laborers
under police supervision while their son attended Garrett Theological
Seminary in Illinois.
Seto found his calling in the mission field, devoting his
life to crossing racial, political and cultural barriers to create community
where there was none. He was sympathetic to to people of other faiths and
facilitated Christian-Muslim dialogue without compromising his own faith.
A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Saturday,
April 17, at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, NM, which he attended
after moving to Santa Fe in retirement and joining the Presbyterian
community at Plaza del Monte.
The Rev. Aurelia Fule, a fellow retiree in Santa Fe who
worked for the PC(USA)'s department of theology and worship, said of Seto:
"I knew Paul for 25 years. He was caring, truly loving ... in the deep sense
of the word. He was the most remarkable person, and he shared something of
what God's love must be like for human beings."
Seto earned a bachelor's degree at the University of
California and graduated from Garrett in 1944. He later studied theology at
Princeton and Hartford seminaries. He was ordained by New Brunswick
Presbytery and in 1946 was assigned to Kermanshah, Iran, by the United
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
He and his wife, Genevieve Reynolds Seto, worked in
missions until 1963, serving in Aleppo, Syria, and Beirut, Lebanon. Seto
taught at Aleppo College and the Near East School of Theology and worked in
a campus ministry in Beirut.
Seto's son, Ted, noting that his parents' 1944 marriage
was interracial and therefore illegal in the United States, said mission
service was an attractive alternative at a time when there was little demand
for Presbyterian ministers of Japanese descent.
"The decision was clearly the right one," Ted Seto said.
"In the field, he was no longer Japanese; he was Christian. That, of course,
posed its own difficulties in the countries to which he was posted, but they
were difficulties common to all missionaries. His extraordinary facility
with languages and great interpersonal skills made him unusually effective.
Race no longer mattered. …
"For him, creation of a world in which all could feel
included and cared for was what the church was about, and his life and
ministry reflected that."
In 1963, after his wife died, Seto married her sister,
Selma, and they returned together to Iran, where they served until 1980.
They were among six Presbyterian missionaries expelled from the country
after the overthrow of the Shah.
Seto later worked as director of the Patterns of
Ecumenical Sharing program at the Stony Point Conference Center in upstate
New York. Before his 1991 retirement, he was a coordinator of mission
programs for the PC(USA), serving in Louisville and New York.
The Rev. Peggy Thomas, who with her husband, Kenneth,
served alongside the Setos in Tehran, said: "Paul Seto understood Jesus'
words about love of the enemy to be at the heart of the gospel. There was
nothing beyond which God could not reach in love -- a tough love that has
consequences that God bears and that we bear, but a love that brings us into
relationships without fear or boundaries."
Selma Seto died in Santa Fe last September.
Seto is survived by five children -- Ted, of Los Angeles;
Thelma Genevieve Seto of Albany, OH; Linda Seto of Taos, NM; Sharon Seto of
Mussoorie, India, director of development at the Woodstock School there; and
Peter Seto, also of Mussoorie, a volunteer at the Christian boarding school
-- and 11 grandchildren.
